


a thousand miles from nowhere

by meroure



Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin, Baby-Sitters Little Sister - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Model, Alternate Universe - Music & Bands, Community: babysitters100, F/M, implied eating disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-05
Updated: 2011-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-23 11:03:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meroure/pseuds/meroure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a thousand miles from nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt _miles_ at babysitters100.

The first time Nancy spots him is at an outdoor party. A large bonfire is crackling, and around it people mingle and pass bottles of beer back and forth. Linny had brought her here, but she had lost sight of him in and among the beautiful people. She doesn't feel like a beautiful person, that is reserved for the catwalk and the clothes that acted as masks. Here, she is just Nancy. Red hair pulled back in a messy braid, a Coca-Cola bottle in one hand, and too afraid to go near the fire. Her gaze is drawn to a boy on the other edge of the flame, clutching a beer like it is his life-line and looking perpetually cold. Their gazes meet and Nancy thinks: Well, not so cold, then.

Want flutters low in her stomach. It is like a moth to a flame, except Nancy has already been burned and isn't as reckless as she thought she could have been.

His name is Andrew. He is a guitar tech. His eyes are large and sad and Nancy thinks, "I understand." She doesn't because they don't talk about that, instead they talk about travel, of wind blowing through the air, of the clarity found in a blue cloudless sky, and the comfort found in a grey cloudy one. His breath tastes like cigarette smoke. His hands around her wrists anchor her down.

Later, hidden by tree foliage and a steamy car window, his hands are steady as he removes her bra. His fingers edge across the trim of her soaken panties. Her hips lift, opening, welcoming. He doesn't enter her like she will break. He enters like he knows she will, like he knows that is she is just waiting to crack.

Afterward, she sneaks her number into his phone and called herself. She is a wild child with dependency issues. Although, not so wild anymore. Her fairy wings have been pulled ruthlessly from her back, sending her tumbling down. (She just wants to see him smile. She just wants to see if he will hang around.)

_it's nancy._

She hadn't expected for him to use it (for him to actually respond) and is secretly pleased when he does.

**hey.**

Sometimes the text messages are as picturesque as a photograph of a sunset or a quote by Nitezche, sometimes they are as mundane as a snapshot of a spoon or text of a single word. Nancy keeps them all, until her inbox exceeds its limit. Even then, she keeps her favorites.

\---

**the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.**

_but how many steps until it ends?_

**too many.**

\---

The second time she sees Andrew is at another party, but this time they are in London. He looks tired, and slightly drunk.

"I have a hotel room," she tells him, supporting his weight with one shoulder. "It has a real bed," she adds inanely.

He just nods, and they stumble out into the street. They trade sloppy kisses, laying on their sides in the hotel bed. She traces the dark bruising under his eyes. He edges her gaunt cheekbone with his finger, connecting dots of freckles usually hidden under layers make-up.

She wasn't lying about the bed. It is real and comfortable, and they fall asleep on top of the covers with their clothes still on.

\---

_do you ever have night terrors?_

**sometimes. but day terrors are the worst, when you see everything go to shit right in front of you and you can't wake up and you can't change a thing.**

\---

In Italy she catches a train from Milan to Rome, arriving just before the main act.

The arena is dark, but the stage is brightly lit with neon lights and the crowd vibrates with energy. On stage the band gives their everything to the audience, and the audience soaks it up and it throws it back in an array of dizzying motion and color.

Nancy hangs toward the back of the crowd, too overwhelmed to do much more than stand in the shadows. She feels too old for this. The audience is the same age as she, but they look alive.

After the show, Andrew shoves her up against an amp while he should be helping break-down the stage equipment. They are half-hidden in the shadows. His face rubs against hers, smearing her leftover make-up from the fashion shoot she had hurriedly left that afternoon. Her head falls backward as he leaves a trail of kisses from her lips to her ear to her neck and back around. Her hands fumble with his belt buckle and when he pushes her down to her knees, Nancy feels like she can finally breathe.

\---

_you shouldn't smoke._

**it hasn’t killed me yet.**

_it will._

**i don't think i’ll live to be that old**

\---

They meet again in Paris. Nancy breaks her two week fast, and goes to dinner with Andrew and the band. They squeeze around a circular table, swapping horror stories of trans-atlantic flights and wardrobe assistance.

Andrew sits beside her. They share a glass of wine. Or two. Or three. And then they stumble back to bed where he drinks her dry. Paris is for lovers, but they aren't quite just.

In the early morning hours, he holds her hair as she kneels in front of the toilet, stomach rebelling against the heavy food. It isn't used to heavy cream and milk. It isn't used to anything at all.

“Sometimes I think I should just be dead," she says, with a brittle laugh, resting her head against the cool porcelain. He doesn't say anything, just rubs the back of her neck with a cool, dry hand.

\---

_sometimes he took photos of me "off-the clock". i hated it. it was like being ripped open._

**did you ever tell him that?**

_no. he always said that true beauty was art, and true art hurt._

\---

In New York, Nancy poses for a magazine editorial. It feels like the bright lights are peeling back her skin, stripping her of her shell and exposing her too soon. The atmosphere is professional, but she is not deaf to the whispered words once Bobby lowers his camera and calls the shoot a success.

She leaves the set quickly. She cannot stomach the half-looks and quiet murmurs. She cannot stomach the thought of running into him. Life, of course, has other plans.

Nancy exits the fitting room after changing into her street clothes. Bobby is just about to re-enter the studio, a cool bottle of water in his hands. They stand across from each other in the middle of the hallway, stranded, neither wanting to make the first move.

It is the first time they have seen each other since the split without an apparatus between them. The anguished look on his face is almost worth it --would be worth it--if Nancy wasn't so sure that the same look was currently mirrored on her face. Some part of her will always love him, for who he was. For who they had been.

"Hey,” someone calls down the hallway, and a warm body wraps around hers from behind. Andrew kisses the corner of her mouth. Bobby uses that distraction to slip away.

"I don't want to talk about it," Nancy says to the unasked question, as Andrew tilts her face towards his.

Andrew studies her for a minute. Nancy feels exposed. Her fingers edge under his shirt, mouth arching up to meet his in a fitting distraction. She thinks they would make a striking pair, black silhouettes framed by her tousled red hair, standing in an abandoned hall. Andrew bites at her lip, and she wonders if Bobby will take a picture for his personal photo album.

\---

_sometimes i'm not sure who i miss more._

**sometimes i'm not sure if anyone misses me at all.**

\---

Nancy is at home. Officially she is relaxing with her family and breathing in the fresh mountain air. Unofficially she is hiding, just days away from a long awaited breakdown that she doesn’t know how to stop.

She spends all day in her childhood bedroom drowning in memories and trying to rediscover who she is. Away from the fast-paced atmosphere, parties and high fashion, she is a corn husk shell of her former self.

Her mother keeps fixing macaroni and cheese to fill the stomach and cure the soul. Nancy tries eating it, but it tastes like sawdust in her mouth, and lead in her stomach (and acid in her throat as it crawls its way upward).

Her father tiptoes around her, like she is an unrecognizable ghost in his daughter’s body. That, she thinks, might be close to the truth.

She doesn’t recognize herself.

Shoved in the back of her dresser drawer she finds a creased Polaroid picture: _Nancy, age 6, on a horse._

In the photograph she looks carefree and happy.

Three hours after sending: _Native Americans believed that cameras kidnapped the soul. I think he stole mine. I don't know what matters anymore_ , he comes to her. She isn‘t sure where he had been, but he appears, knocking at her front door. She hears her mother let him in, and the soft chatter of voices as he pads down the hallway.

Andrew doesn't say anything, just crawls underneath the quilt with her. His feet intertwine with hers and he holds her as she silently shakes, lips pressing light kisses against her temple. His hands don’t wander, he understands that isn't what she needs right now.

The next morning she wakes to an empty bed, but there is a large heart drawn in red lipstick on her vanity. In the kitchen she finds him; hair still wet from a shower and wearing her father’s too large sweats. He sits at the kitchen table listening and nodding a long as her mother prattles around in the kitchen fixing breakfast.

"Good morning honey. Did you sleep well?" her mother asks. _I like him_ , her eyes say.

"Yes," Nancy says and _me too._

\---

_i don't think i really loved him. i was just looking for someone who reminded me of home._

**did he?**

_no. but i thought pretending was enough._

\---

She is stuck in Chicago at O'Hare International. Flight after flight pass overhead, but Nancy is grounded for the foreseeable future.

She texts him on a whim. Less than thirty minutes later he shows up, carrying take-out and offering his company.

“There’s this band,” he explains, when she asks why he is there.

No, she wants to say, why are you _here?_

The food is long gone by the time her phone vibrates. Andrew freezes when he sees the name on the caller i.d. Nancy doesn't think about what it means, just snags the phone from where it lays between them on an empty seat.

It is just Hannie. Andrew sits in his seat, posture rigid as Nancy replies to multiple messages. Hannie is in New York City. The city that never sleeps and where the drama never ends. The texts arrive in short bursts, complaining about Pamela’s backstabbing ways, and the latest tension between Karen and Ricky.

Andrew picks up a week old newspaper and pretends to read.

When her flight is finally cancelled for good Andrew pulls the phone from her hand, directing her to the customer service desk. And when she has a new ticket booked--8:45 tomorrow morning, first class-- he leads her out of the airport and onto the El. All without talking.

Three gin and tonics and one suspicious looking concoction later, Andrew pins her to the floor of the friend of a friend’s apartment he is crashing at. Her shirt rides up, and she can feel the rug burn searing across her back.

"I like my private life private." His eyes are dark, and Nancy would be scared if she didn't trust him so fully, if she didn't understand that he was scared too. "Don't talk to them about me. Don't tell them about me. It's nobody's fucking business."

She wonders why he cares, but it isn’t her place to ask.

"I won't," she says, holding his gaze. "I promise."

He fucks her roughly into the carpet, adding one more stain to the already stained beige. Her hands reach out, grasping at nothing, fingernails pressing against the inside of her palm.

\---

_do you ever get tired of keeping secrets?_

**sometimes. but then i think: what if it's not my secret to tell?**

\---

A late night text message just worrying enough that Nancy borrows her parents’ car and drives the four and a half hours to see him. The next morning neither of them mention the commitment that took.

Andrew is upset that night. His words are looser, but no matter what pieces Nancy is able to glean, they aren’t enough. He is at odds with his family, she figures out. He does not understand why they can’t understand him, and he misses what he once had. What he has been told he once had. He tries to do the right thing, but sometimes he feels like he is living his life backwards.

She spoons behind him, pressed up against his chest, rubbing him and cooing platitudes into his ear. She pretends that she doesn’t notice the tears pooling on the pillowcase.

He falls into a restless sleep, and Nancy dozes beside him, trying to anchor him down. In the middle of the night they fuck, on a twin bed and in the half-occupied apartment where he is staying.

"You can't fix this," he tells her in the morning. She's eating a container of blueberry yogurt at the kitchen table. He's leaning against the sink, tossing an orange in his hands. "You can't fix me."

"I know," she says. It's a lie. She wants to.

\---

**can you miss what you don't remember?**

_yes._

\---

The club is filled to maximum capacity. It is a promotion event for a new band. According to the twitter invite they sound like Ok Go meets Evanescence, and Nancy isn’t sure who thought that combination was a good idea. She’s been back in the City for two weeks, only leaving her apartment for jobs and the essential purchases. Linny drags Nancy out of her self-imposed solitude with the promise of good music and cheap alcohol.

Logically, Nancy knows that the world she lives in is small. It is built on photographs and paparazzi and socialites. On money and music and fashion. Anytime she goes to a party or event there are bound to be people she knows. Even though her face graces countless ads and runways, she never expects to be recognized.

It comes as a shock when she spies the band Andrew last toured with standing in the middle of the crowded room. They wave her over, and Nancy goes. She’s met them several times so the conversation is easy and she effortlessly deflects an attempt by the lead guitarist to get her into bed.

“Andrew is around here somewhere,” they tell her.

Jeff, the band’s bass tech, catches up with her near the bar. She’s sipping an amaretto sour and calculating her chances of making an escape from the party without anyone noticing. She’s tempted to ignore him, but he has always been nice to her so she risks a smile.

He stands uncomfortably close, and makes sad faces at her.

"Are you guys exclusive?" he asks, gesturing with his hand.

Nancy doesn't understand what he means until she sees a scene boy, skintight jeans and hair carefully styled over his eyes, wrap a hand around Andrew's skinny wrist.

_Oh._ Nancy honestly hadn't thought of that.

\---

_i'm afraid i'm unloveable._

**i know i am.**

\---

Nancy doesn't believe in romance or school-girl love. She knows that fairytale endings don't exist, that heroes and princes are no different than dragons and beasts.

Still, some part of her thinks it would be nice to welcome in the New Year with a kiss from Andrew.

When she sees him making out with Claire, her heart stops. It seems different when it is someone she knows, more personal and real. They are accented by neon lights, lips and hips sliding together in time with the music. Too caught up in each other, they don’t see her. Nancy turns and walks in the opposite direction.

The next morning they meet at Starbucks for coffee. He has a venti caffe mocha, soy milk, whipped cream. She has a short hot chocolate, soy milk, no whipped cream. They split an apple bran muffin.

She never mentions what she saw.

\---

_do you have a new years eve resolution?_

**to forgive and forget.**

_is it that easy?_

**no.**

\---

"Come out with us," he invites her. She says "yes" because she is nineteen years old, and should crave adventure.

\---

_do you ever feel like you are reliving THAT moment and nothing makes it better?_

**sometimes.**

_how do you move on?_

**you don't have a choice.**

\---

The last time is in a van bunk on the road between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Nancy meets his eyes and tries to pretend her heart isn't breaking. She doesn't think she did a very good job.

Afterward they sit on a empty placed rest-area picnic table, watching the sun rise over the desert and rock formations. The air is already warm, and Nancy can feel the skin of her shoulder beginning to stick to the skin of his.

"I want...I-I thought I could do this, but I can't," she says finally. She wants him to tell her that it'll be different. That he will try. That they could try. But he doesn't.

He hangs his head. "I'm sorry."

She can't summon the energy to be angry at him. _Me too._

"You're my best friend," she says carefully. "That doesn't have to change." She can sense rather than see his smile.

"You’re mine, too," his voice is rough.

Nancy leans and rests her head against his shoulder. "It's going to be okay," she tells him. "We still have miles to go."

"Yeah," he says, putting a hand around her waist. "That's what I've heard."

\---

**i want to live & be alive.**

_are you?_

**i don't know. i'm still figuring it out.**

_so am i._


End file.
